I have spent my entire life working day and night so that the world will, so far as possible, be run the way I want it to.

I want the world to do what I tell it to do.

This is not a modest request.

Some people say, “Do you realize that you might have wasted your whole life? Don’t you realize that all the things you think you helped do might have happened without you?”

Could be.

All I want is for the world to do what I think is right.

Let me repeat: This is NOT a modest request.

So when things do go right, and they sometimes do, I don’t sit around worrying about whether I am wasting my life. I will settle for the times the world moves my way.

I let other people worry about the important stuff.

I don’t like long blog entries, so I will deal specifically with what Mark said later. Right now let me deal with LESSON ONE of what he said.

Please remember that the blog is porch talk. Sometimes poor little Bobby’s tummy doesn’t feel good, so he bitches and he moans and makes a fool of himself.

Again.

So what do you do about it? You say exactly what you would say if you were on the porch to a respected member of the family who has said something stupid.

You say, “I respect you, Uncle Bob, but you are making an ass of yourself.”

“Again.”

Mark just did that, and I took it like a man. Some of you may want to know how a truly mature man deals with justifiable criticism:

I am writing this in a fetal position under my bed. I am typing with one hand and sucking the thumb on the other. I stopped holding my breath several seconds ago.

But once I get out of my trauma stage, I will appreciate what Mark told me.

Yes, Mark, it is stupid and childish for me to betray people who take the trouble to read what I have to say by accusing them of not getting the point. I am insulting the very people who are among the very, very few who read AND APPRECIATE what I have to say, and there is no excuse for that.

Let me repeat that: There is NO excuse for behavior like that.

I appreciate just how bad this behavior is. All my life I have been sickened by New York editorialists telling their readers how stupid they were. Beginning in the 1960s, a fashionable editorialists just could not insult his readers enough. He would tell them how nasty Americans are and how evil white people are.

Readers couldn’t get enough of it. They just grovelled ecstatically.

All those years I kept wondering, will anybody ever tell those insulters to go to hell instead of just lying down and taking it?

Well, when Bobby’s tummy hurt and he made the same mistake, MY readers called me down on it.

MY blog readers are not as tame as the people who live by New York Times editorials.

Stay wild.